


opened his baleful eyes a slit

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [293]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Foreshadowing, Gen, Glaurung makes a friend, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Slavery, Slurs, Villains being Villains, set directly after the meeting where Goodley hands over Maeglin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26202019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: “What’s your trouble?” Gothmog asked.Glaurung allowed his smile to warm and gild like something worth an overseer’s rum-money. “I’d like to have a drink with you.”
Relationships: Glaurung & Gothmog (Lord of Balrogs)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [293]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	opened his baleful eyes a slit

Glaurung recognized the curvature of Southern breeding in the big man’s voice, and that intrigued him. It answered a question first posed by the coiled whip at his belt. A man who carried a bullwhip with him _might_ be a rancher, but a man whose whip was tipped with silver, glinting along its coils with embedded nibs, was a man who had made a name for himself driving more than cattle.

Glaurung was, of course, familiar with the overseers of the south. A flourishing breed, despite the unrest that crackled along the borderlines. With the assistance of men like himself, and laws that sheltered like roofs the interests of those who wanted to keep their property in line, overseers still inherited their earths, and ground blood into them. As such, the man was distasteful but useful.

Some might have thought Glaurung a fool, for choosing the Californian side of the Compromise—just when the Act was making it all the easier for him to obtain his quarries. But he considered himself a man who held a finger to the wind, at all times, and the winds were changing.

That, and the west held interest. Clearly this Cosomoco Gothmog had thought the same.

Anne McCalagon was a woman of few words, and so _their_ portion of the business was soon over. The frightened child was transferred to Glaurung’s care, but he had little interest in attending the brat. When they had followed Gothmog and the boy’s old keeper down the steep stair and out onto the street, Glaurung snapped his fingers at the boy and said, with a smile rather like the one he used to bid a whore,

“Shall I tie you to one of the poles, or dare I hope you’ll wait for me?”

As he’d hoped, Gothmog turned on his heel.

A rule of _catching_ was knowing how to draw another in without addressing them directly. You always watched who turned.

“What’s your trouble?” Gothmog asked.

Glaurung allowed his smile to warm and gild like something worth an overseer’s rum-money. “I’d like to have a drink with you.”

“Well now,” said Gothmog, lifting the crown of his hat and dropping it down, in contemplation rather than salute, “Goodley can look after the brat a bit longer. Can’t you, Goodley?”

The man nodded. He was a hard-eyed fellow himself, but afraid of Gothmog. Another useful point.

They had drink and meat at the same tavern Glaurung had quitted that morning. Gothmog looked like a man of heavy, stormy temper, but he was in good enough humor today. His purse was very full. He was not ungenerous, either with word or coin.

His words interested Glaurung most. Anne McCalagon wasn’t the only lofty head in the mountainous west. Gothmog had seen stranger sorts, and killed them, than Glaurung had had truck with outside of a few ruthless natives.

Plied with mugs of stout, and satisfied with what Glaurung had freely volunteered of his own eastern pursuits, Gothmog’s tales flowed long. He _had_ been an overseer, just as Glaurung had suspected.

“So there I was, plunging his head into the barrel as if I were his mammy! I say to myself, _you’ve lost your dignity, not that you ever cared much for it_. But I’m a man of my bond, and he was a right mess, head to toe mud. Wouldn’t do to hand that over, not for someone’s fancy.”

Glaurung recoiled, delighted. “So it _was_ a fancy? This Bauglir fellow—”

“I don’t rightly know. It weren’t _natural_ , though, whatever was between ‘em. But nor was I able to make heads or tails of it thereafter. A few months in, after I hand Bauglir this dandified fellow, pretty as I can make him, I’m called back. Bauglir calls me back, says, _take him_. And he hands me over—damnation, I can’t even say what.”

“The slave?”

“What was left of ‘im. They’d gone mad on his body, that’s the only way I can put it, and not as you’d treat a lady. Lor—now listen here, you’ve handled stock. Most, a punishing man will ply with one brand, eh? Mebbe two, if they stay rowdy. This scrap had a dozen burns on him. Aye, and he’d been beaten with rope and metal, too! They’d taken a patch of skin here and there. Even shorn off the mane I labored over.”

Glaurung brushed the waxed hairs on his upper lip, pondering this. With some powers, you could learn their weaknesses and treat them like currency. But this Bauglir fellow—gone from the south before Glaurung made his name there, more was the pity—seemed to have no shame.

No shame, and no discernible logic. Both dangerous.

“I once tracked a favorite,” he said. Gothmog was, though friendly at present, a man who sought an even exchange. In this case, of information. “Comely, for her color. Took pains to bring her back unspoiled—no easy thing, given how she fought. But grateful as the master was, I heard she was dead within a month. It was the wife.”

“Women,” said Gothmog. “Can’t trust ‘em.”

“Yet you’ve made your lot with McCalagon.”

“So’ve you.”

Glaurung raised his mug. “Fair point. So. Bauglir’s so long-tailed that he’s tripped over himself. And what of the slave?” He was fascinated, somehow, by the dandy slave.

“He came to me, as I said. And for all that he was dead on his feet to look at, there was trouble in him.” Gothmog’s jovial manner receded as if behind a cloud. His eyes shone out more fiercely though; small, dark eyes. Glaurung met them steadily. He felt himself appraised, and submitted to it.

“Trouble?”

“We each have our pleasures of trade,” Gothmog said, tapping a blunt nail on the table. “There’s the rewards we claim in leisure. And then there’s the beauty of a day’s work. He stole that from me, just on account of orneriness. Couldn’t even relish a good thrashing, after a time.”

“Pity, that.” Glaurung nodded sympathetically. “And now he’s gone?”

“Now he’s gone. But he’s a cripple, and more besides.” Gothmog shook his head. “Bauglir took his pleasure one way or another from the sly fox. If he yet lives, he’ll lay low in his hole.”

Glaurung was again taken with what he could not clearly imagine. “I shall brush up on my fox-catching, nonetheless.”

“If you ever cross paths with him, get word to me,” Gothmog said. He drained his mug and rose. “I’ve a hounding to enjoy of my own.” He tapped the whip at his belt. “He owes me a few yelps.”

“I shall, sir.” Glaurung left an inch or so of his stout unfinished; it was nasty stuff, and he had hours left in the day, what with taking the brat back to McCalagon’s provided smithy. “You’ve been just tremendous. Might I beg one more favor?”

“I’m out of the business of delivering whores, if that’s your answer,” Gothmog said, with a low chuckle.

“Thank you, I find my own.” Glaurung tilted his hat over his brow. “No, no. This concerns _my_ latest charge…this boy that Lady McCalagon tells me has the genius of metalwork. Is he a slave too? Another of Bauglir’s favorites.”

Gothmog shook his head. Laughed, louder this time. “Not a slave,” he said. “But never will be a man, neither.” He swung his leg back over the bench. “Hold there, we’ve time for one more drink. I’d never seen this little Maeglin before, mind you. But where he came from is a tale worthy of the telling…”


End file.
